The song is used in a children's singing game with the same name, in which the players file, in pairs, through an arch made by two of the players (made by having the players face each other, raise their arms over their head, and clasp their partners' hands). The challenge comes during the final lines:

Here comes a candle to light you to bed.

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

(Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead.)

On the last word, the children forming the arch drop their arms to catch the pair of children currently passing through, who are then "out" and must form another arch next to the existing one. In this way, the series of arches becomes a steadily lengthening tunnel through which each set of two players have to run faster and faster to escape in time.[1]

Alternative versions of the game include: children caught "out" by the last rhyme may stand on a pressure plate behind one of the children forming the original arch, instead of forming additional arches; and, children forming "arches" may bring their hands down for each word of the last line, while the children passing through the arches run as fast as they can to avoid being caught on the last word.[3] It was often the case, in Scottish playgrounds, that children would pair into boy and girl and the ones "caught" would have to kiss.[citation needed]

Illustration for the rhyme from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (1833)

Various theories have been advanced to account for the rhyme, including: that it deals with child sacrifice; that it describes public executions; that it describes Henry VIII's marital difficulties.[1] Problematically for these theories the last two lines, with their different metre, do not appear in the earlier recorded versions of the rhyme, including the first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), where the lyrics are:

Two Sticks and Apple,
Ring ye Bells at Whitechapple,
Old Father Bald Pate,
Ring ye Bells Aldgate,
Maids in White Aprons,
Ring ye Bells a St. Catherines,
Oranges and Lemons,
Ring ye bells at St. Clements,
When will you pay me,
Ring ye Bells at ye Old Bailey,
When I am Rich,
Ring ye Bells at Fleetditch,
When will that be,
Ring ye Bells at Stepney,
When I am Old,
Ring ye Bells at Pauls.[1]

There is considerable variation in the churches and lines attached to them in versions printed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which makes any overall meaning difficult to establish. The final two lines of the modern version were first collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.[1]

Oranges and Lemons was the name of a square-four-eight-dance, published in Playford's, Dancing Master in 1665, but it is not clear if this relates to this rhyme.[1] Similar rhymes naming churches and giving rhymes to their names can be found in other parts of England, including Shropshire and Derby, where they were sung on festival days, on which bells would also have been rung.[1]

The identity of the churches is not always clear, but the following have been suggested, along with some factors that may have influenced the accompanying statements:[1]

The tune is reminiscent of change ringing, and the intonation of each line is said to correspond with the distinct sounds of each church's bells. Today, the bells of St. Clement Danes ring out the tune of the rhyme.[4]

The song is one of the nursery rhymes most commonly referred to in popular culture. These include George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), where it is used as a snippet of nursery rhyme which embodies the forgotten past that protagonist Winston Smith yearns for. Various characters contribute snippets of the rhyme as the book goes on, and the last lines figure symbolically into the closing events of the second section.[5] A setting of the full Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book version for choir was written by Bob Chilcott. Entitled "London Bells", it is the third movement of "Songs and Cries of London Town".[6]Benjamin Till composed music based upon the nursery rhyme and it was performed in 2009 at St Mary Le Bow Church, London to honour 150 years of the great bell, Big Ben.[7] In the dystopian future of the video game Half-Life 2 (2004), oranges and lemons can be seen in graffiti on walls as symbols of the Resistance. This is a reference to the poem as it was used in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[8] In Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (2008), two lesser villains recite the rhyme to summon the man Jack.[9] In the 1963 horror-comedy The Old Dark House, part of the rhyme is heard in a tape recording played backwards while trying to discover the identity of the secret killer.

You owe me a move say the bells of St. Groove
Come on and show me say the bells of Old Bowie
When I am fitter say the bells of Gary Glitter
No one but you and I say the bells of Prince Far-I
No one but you and I say the bells of Prince Far-I